Chapter Text
Remus hits a table where a moment ago a table had not been, and drops onto the floor behind someone’s sofa, clutching his throbbing head in both hands. He curses under his breath and has to scramble on his hands and knees into the corner behind a bookcase when he hears a door shutting somewhere, and the distinct footsteps of somebody approaching the room.
He presses his back against the wall and pulls his feet in as far as he can just as the stranger throws the door open, but the footsteps stop just inside the room. Remus’ heart is pounding and he’s squeezing his eyes shut, trying so hard to keep from panting for breath and giving his position away that he doesn’t realise yet that he knows where he is.
“Hello?”
When he hears Sirius’ voice Remus’ whole body relaxes instantly and he slides a little down the wall. The paper is sticky beneath his bare shoulder, but it’s cool against his skin.
“It’s me,” he sighs, swallowing back the nausea and flailing a hand out from behind the bookcase. A moment later, Sirius steps in front of him holding his hands in his hair, looking a little annoyed.
“Shit, I thought you were a burglar, or a- a murderer - you need a fucking bell!” he grumbles as he tugs his jumper off over his head and hands it down to Remus, who sits with it in his lap for another minute or so as his breathing evens out.
“Someone wants to murder you?” he asks finally, voice muffled as he pulls the jumper on.
“You, apparently,” Sirius shoots back, sitting down heavily on the couch. He stares out of the windows, away from Remus, and continues to run a hand through his hair distractedly.
“Are you okay? You seem… tense.” Remus pushes himself up on the wall and tugs the hem of the jumper down so that his junk is covered, before padding into the kitchenette for a glass of water.
There’s a barely audible sound from the sofa, something like a grumble, but Sirius doesn’t answer. Remus gulps down an entire glass, gasping with satisfaction when it’s emptied and swiftly refills it. “You usually take it better than this,” he mentions.
Sirius abruptly turns around on the couch so that he’s looking over at Remus beside the sink, and a sort of incredulity is struck through with frustration on his face. He huffs a laugh.
“This is a bit new for me, actually,” Sirius informs him sharply.
Remus has to laugh, because he obviously isn’t being literal. Their entire relationship is formed around the fact that Sirius has had Remus dropping in on him since about the age of 8, so turning up starkers in their shared flat is hardly a strange event.
Maybe Sirius is having a bad day, he thinks, and pads over so that he’s stood on the slightly warmer carpet beside the coffee table. He peers down at Sirius as he takes another long drink from the glass, and then clutches it to his chest as he asks, “what’s the date?”
“Nineteenth of June,” Sirius grumbles, and then groans and tips his head back when Remus lets go of the hem of the jumper to tut and click his fingers in Sirius’ face.
“And a year!”
“Seventy-nine! Can you watch what you’re doing with your hands, please? I don’t need an unsolicited eye-full at nine-thirty in the morning!”
Remus takes the proffered sofa cushion and holds it against his crotch, then just for the joke of it, turns his arse towards Sirius and wanders over to have a look out of the window. He prods a finger in the condensation against the window and hums to himself when he spots the burnt-out car sitting on bricks outside the flat which is still there in his own time.
When he turns back around, Sirius still has his head tipped back against the sofa, staring up at the ceiling blankly. Honestly, it’s a little unnerving, so Remus clears his throat quietly, and when this garners no reaction he approaches and gently presses a toe to Sirius’ shin.
“Look, are you- are you alright?” he asks softly.
Nothing.
“I’m... sorry about flashing you my arse, if that’s--?” he says very solemnly, venturing a guess, and is startlingly relieved when Sirius interrupts with a snorting laugh and finally lifts his head.
“I forgot how much of a dickhead you are sometimes. How old are you, anyway?”
Remus dips his head to acknowledge the dickhead remark, which is fair really, but that’s Sirius rubbing off on him, so who’s to blame, honestly? He flops down onto the sofa beside Sirius. There’s a moment’s panic when Sirius thinks his glass is going to slosh water everywhere, but Remus reassures him that it’s empty by upturning it over Sirius’ lap.
“I’m only from next May,” he says on the end of a laugh, letting Sirius pluck the glass from his hand.
“You’re twenty? You’re like a fucking whirlwind.” He gestures at Remus almost dismissively, but his eyes roam Remus’ face with an almost desperate sort of intrigue. “This is not the Remus I left at the bus stop last night. What happens between now and May?”
Remus raises both eyebrows in a way that is somehow suggestive and ambiguous at the same time, and laughs at the face Sirius makes in response. It’s fairly warm so he doesn’t mind being in the buff on the sofa, and takes a moment to shuffle around and make himself comfortable, pulling his feet up onto the seat and readjusting his grip on the cushion on his lap. When he looks up to find Sirius still watching him expectantly, he scoffs.
“You’re not seriously asking me for details?” Remus smirks, and shakes his head in faux disappointment. “Come on, Sirius.”
He gives Remus a heavy sigh in return, and when he speaks it’s in a quiet little pained voice. “I feel really fucking rusty at this.”
“Rusty at what?”
“Sparring with a time-traveller!” Sirius growls, but he doesn’t sound angry about it, so Remus pokes his foot into the nearest thigh.
“You love it!”
“You absolutely scramble my brain, Remus. You’re like an entirely different person every time, and now, to make it all infinitely weirder, I’ve got a present-day Remus to contrast you against, and it’s a bit f-- bloody exhausting!”
“Did you just censor yourself?”
“You used to tell me off for swearing!” Sirius throws his hands up and Remus has to clutch his stomach from laughing so hard at the additional pouting.
“Did I?” he howls, and then without giving it a second’s thought he reaches out and strokes Sirius’ cheek in apology.
Sirius freezes under the touch and all the air seems to go out of the room.
Remus pulls his hand back slowly and tucks it under his armpit. “Sorry- sorry,” he mutters at his knees, but he sees Sirius shaking his head gently from under his eyelashes.
They sit in silence for a moment. When Remus lifts his gaze to see how Sirius is processing this, he finds him chewing his bottom lip and staring intently at Remus.
“You know,” he begins quietly, “the last time you dropped in on me, I was seventeen.”
It takes a little second for the words to sink in and then Remus feels so guilty that he has to slump sideways into the sofa and rub a hand down his face. “Oh, Sirius,” he groans softly, “for fuck’s sake- I wondered why you were being so weird--”
“I thought you were a fucking murderer!”
“Come here, you numpty.” Remus tugs on the shoulder of Sirius’ t-shirt, but he won’t budge.
“I thought, ‘shit, I’m going to die here, alone in my shitty flat, and Remus will have no idea until he comes to look for me in a week or so! What an absolute shit thing to happen when I’ve just found him for real!’”
Remus growls and shuffles over the empty seat between them when Sirius proves too deep in his frantic rambling to heed Remus’ request to come closer, and pulls Sirius down into his arms. “I’m- well, you do have other friends who probably would have found you first, but--”
“Not necessarily! I thought I’d fucked it just as it’s got to the good bit!”
The good bit, he says, and Remus’ heart swells with fondness. He buries his face in the hair on the top of Sirius’ head to muffle his laugh. “You’re so dramatic.”
They sit there quietly, pressed together on the couch, until the late afternoon sun has crept it’s way across the carpet and up the chimney breast, and Remus feels time sink its hook back into him.
It rushes in fast - before he can take himself away to another room, or settle Sirius’ sleeping form gently onto the couch behind him. His hands begin to shake as he’s getting up, and he has to clench them between his thighs to gain a modicum of control. He hurriedly gets down on his knees before he falls down, and regrets that he has to snap at Sirius when he glances back over his shoulder and sees him frozen on the couch, struck with concern.
“Don’t look!” Remus barks, and as he’s sinking to the floor, between the pain tearing at him and the tears blurring his vision, he sees Sirius obediently press his hands over his own eyes. He lets out a helpless little bubble of laughter as he thinks of 8-year-old Sirius doing the exact same thing when Remus was leaving after that first golden visit.
And then he’s gone.